1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to microscope apparatuses, and more particularly, to a microscope apparatus and a cell observation method in which it is possible to identify the phase of a cell in the cell cycle and in which an optical stimulus can be applied to a cell.
This application is based on Japanese Patent Application No. 2006-138848, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
A known laser scanning cytometer (LSC) in the related art analyzes the cell phase of a specimen by obtaining image information by irradiating the specimen with laser light and acquiring the resulting fluorescence emitted from the specimen.
In addition, a known laser microscope in the related art has a confocal laser-scanning microscope (CLSM) function enabling it to observe cells identified as being in each phase of the cell cycle (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2000-97857).
This laser microscope includes beam-diameter switching means capable of switching the beam diameter of a laser beam incident on the pupil of an objective lens from a laser light source and light-path switching means for switching the fluorescence generated in the specimen between an observation light path and a light path used for analyzing the cell phase analysis. By switching the beam diameter irradiating the specimen and the light path along which the generated fluorescence travels, both cell-phase analysis and observation of the specimen are performed with a single apparatus.
It is sometimes necessary to observe what kind of activity the cells exhibit in each cell phase, for example, the relationship between the cell phase and the reaction to a stimulus (its effect on the cell). However, the conventional laser microscope described above does not consider such observation.